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Hello, everyone. In the last chapter, we discussed the thought of Yin and Yang in four aspects.

Then, this time, we will discuss the Doctrine of Five Elements in the four aspects.

The first topic is ”concept and evolution of the Five Elements“.

Five Elements was originated from the idea of The Five Directions in Shang Dynasty

It was recorded in the oracle inscription on bones and tortoise shells.

The people in Shang Dynasty called the territory of Shang Dynasty as “Middle Shang”

Along with it were the names of “East Land”, “South Land”, “West Land” and “North Land”

So, Five Directions include all the directions in space.

After the theory of Five Directions, there was the theory of Five Materials.

Master Han in the Spring and Autumn period once said:

“There were five materials in the world. People should use all of them.”

So what are those Five Materials?

Five Materials refer to wood, fire, earth, gold and water.

This is a kind of simple materialistic idea.

It tries to attribute all the tangible objects to five kinds and it confirms the materialism of the world.

In the Book of History, there is an item that reads “Water and Fire is what the people drink and eat; Metal and Wood is what the people used to make things; Earth, is where everything grows. “

It emphasizes that the Five Elements are closely related with our daily life.

How can we understand that?

As it is known to all, Water is the source of life.

70% of the body is made of water.

Water is the necessary substance for the physiological and biochemical reaction,

As well as the carrier of releasing waste in the body.

So, water is vital for life.

"Ancestor Sui drilled wood for fire", which has totally changed our way of drinking and eating.

Since then, people have lived life totally different with the wild animals.

We can take the nutrition from food more efficient. The better way of eating helps us to be healthier and to breed more children.

Our ancestor You Chao used metal and wood to build houses, which totally changed our way of living in the cave.

He improved our housing conditions.

So Five Materials are important for our body as well as our life.

They reduces the harm caused by the harsh conditions.

With the development of productivity, people enter the stage of agrarian society.

People cultivated crops on the arable land to guarantee the source of food.

In the last thousands of years, earth is the root of life.

Reasons above can easily explain why our ancestors paid great attention to the Five Materials.

However, ancient Chinese furthered the nature of the Five Materials by distilling the theory.

They tried to explain other phenomena by categorizing them into the five elements.

The Book of History has mentioned the Five Elements in one Chapter:

There are Five Elements: Water, Fire, Wood, Metal and Earth.

Water flows down and wet things, fire heats things above it, wood can be straight or bended, metal can be made into different shapes and crops can grow on earth.

Water becomes salty when it flows down, bitter smell emits when something is in fire, sour taste is created by the flexible wood, spicy taste is produced by the metal and sweet taste is made from crops.

This explanation further explains the features of the Five Elements.

It tries to relate the Five Elements with the Five tastes.

How to understand the connection?

Let us start with the Wood.

“Wood can be straight or bended” means that trees grow straight or bended.

Other features like being flexible can be attributed to the features of wood.

The idea of "straight or winding" is the posture of the trunks that grow upward and the branches that stretch outside.

This can be used to described the objects and phenomena which were growing, developing or stretching.

All those features can be attributed to wood.

“Heating things above” is the feature of fire.

"Fire heats things above it" means that warmth, ascension and brightness are the features of fire.

“Heating things above” refers to the feature of fire that its heat pass upward.

So, the elements of fire can be extended to all the features of warmth, ascension, brightness and fertilization.

“Crops can grow” refers to cultivating on the arable land.

Receiving, bearing and growing are the features of Earth.

“Jia” here means land and “Qiang” means harvest.

“Jia Qiang” means that people can cultivate and harvest on the land.

All the ability or phenomena of receiving, bearing and growing can be categorized into the features of Earth.

So, people value the Earth a lot.

We have the proverb like “Earth bears the other four Elements”, “All the things are born and dead in the earth” and “Earth is the mother of everything.

Then let us analyse the features of Metal

“Cong Ge” has the meaning of change and killing.

The features of Metal can be extended to explain all the objects or phenomena that contain the meaning of killing, degrading, constraint or cleaning.”

“Run Xia” means that water owns the features of moisture, going downward, coldness and hiding

“Run Xia” means that water owns the features of going own and moistening things.

The features of water are extended to all the objects or phenomena that implies coldness, moisture, going down and hiding.

Through simple materialistic analysis, the ancient Chinese generalized the features of the Five Materials in the philosophic way.

Deducing in this way, ancient Chinese also analyze the nature of something more complicated inn the five aspects.

In the book of National History- Zheng,

“ The ancient king mixed earth with metal, wood, water and fire to form everything.”

All the things in the world is created by the reaction among the Five Elemtns.

So, the theory of Five Elements has surpassed the idea that they are used to sustain life.

The theory is "based on the Five Elements and higher than the Five Elements."

It has become a mode of thought for people to observe the nature.

In this way, the nature and the correspondent relationship between the single ephemeron or the unit of body with the Five Elements can be figured out.